Russia's Muslim Heartlands by Rubin Dominic;

Author:Rubin, Dominic;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: C. Hurst and Company (Publishers) Limited
Published: 2018-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

How to celebrate a wedding: lezginka or nasheed?

The following day, the theme of science comes up again, when I actually meet some Dagestani scientists at a wedding, and get a chance to see how Bagaudinovich’s views fit in with other people’s. At my table, every one of the eight guests is a mathematician or scientist, and some are heads of their departments. The make-up is ethnically diverse: a Lezgin, a Tabarasan, a Dargin, three Avars and a Russian. Quite a bit of the conversation is taken up with ethnic kidding: a drunk Lezgin is like a sober Dargin, and so on. The tables are also gender-segregated, and judging from the cafés I have been out in, it seems that this is not an Islamic arrangement but just part of the local patriarchal culture.

But Bagaudinovich confides that events such as these are still in search of a solid format. Many people no longer feel comfortable with the old boozy wedding celebrations, but they still do not know quite how to behave Islamically. “It’s clumsy,” he says, and today’s event bears him out. At our tables, the drinks are tea and juices—the vodka and Soviet shampanskoe are out. Instead of the usual wild dancing and thumping traditional Caucasian songs with boys doing the lezginka dance, (and we pass such a reception spilling out of a banquet hall on our walk back into town) this couple wanted something more Islamic: so a handful of religious students have been brought in to provide the Islamic content. From time to time, a quiet thoughtful youth will get up and take the microphone to recite some ayats from the Qur’an. Or, after the rash of speeches and congratulations has died down, the music system will come alive with the latest Middle Eastern nasheeds in Arabic praising the birth of the Prophet.

“Personally,” Bagaudinovich tells me in between the din of speeches, nasheeds and toasts, “I don’t like this mixed sort of event. I think you should either have a mawlid or a secular wedding reception—without the drink, of course. This is neither one thing nor the other.” The science professors are uncomfortable for their own reasons. At first, they observe a patient silence when the Qur’an reciter starts reading, but soon they are back to their whispers. Bagaudinovich chides them as the reading is coming to an end: “Be quiet, you atheist rabble!” The tone is light-hearted, but there is a slight undercurrent of seriousness. After a decent interval of an hour, the more senior professors get up to leave, having put in their stint.

After the table has emptied, I am left alone with Bagaudinovich and the lone Russian. He moves down to sit opposite me, extending a hand to introduce himself as Sergei Nicolaevich. His Russian face, plump, with a shock of white hair and rheumy blue eyes, makes me nostalgic for my in-laws and I chat naturally to him, feeling now that I am at a Moscow family gathering. The crisis of Russian universities is

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